Extend Internet Explorer with Web Accessories

by Susan Hutton

When you move to a new city, you might mark a route to work remembering what is familiar:  you drive past the bank, over the bridge, and turn left at the elementary school. You might take this drive for several months, and then discover you could cut your time in half by simply turning right at the bank.

You can find information faster by adding Web Accessories to your Internet Explorer 5 browser.  Web Accessories bring other sites' information and functionality right to your desktop--no matter where in the World Wide Web you are.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line
Web Accessories work like all the other "easy-browsing" Internet Explorer features. When you add a Web Accessory to your browser--usually in the form of an Explorer bar or a toolbar button--you always have access to it, just as if it were any other Internet Explorer feature.

Web Accessories were developed by Microsoft and by several other leading Internet companies, like the New York Times and Alta Vista. Some of the best Web Accessories are Explorer bars that give you immediate access to information you would normally have to travel to a Web site to get. The New York Times Explorer Bar, for example, gives you the day's top stories, news updates, and stock quotes that are updated every ten seconds in an easy-to-read pane at the bottom of your browser.  The Bloomberg Explorer Bar gives you the latest stock and business news the same way.

Web Accessories also give you a handy way to do things, in addition to providing quick access to information.  Alta Vista's Translation Bar is a great example.  The Translation Bar lets you translate Web pages into five major languages simply by clicking the button it adds your toolbar.  You can also get great new browsing features from Microsoft that let you zoom in on an image, or you can add some color to your browser buttons with Internet Explorer 5 Toolbar Wallpaper.

So go ahead, extend Internet Explorer features, and find the fastest way to get what you want from the Web.

Susan Hutton thinks it's a snap to keep up with the news, thanks to the New York Times Explorer Bar.